Ontario ombudsman launches Hydro One investigation

Tina Michaluk is shown Mon. Feb. 4, 2014, at her Belle River home, is a Hydro One customer who was forced to pay a $900 utility bill at her uninhabited house following a fire, to avoid getting her power cut off. (DAN JANISSE/The Windsor Star)

Firefighters shut off the power to Tina Michaluk’s Belle River home after a fire in June, but that didn’t stop Hydro One from from greeting her with a $900 bill when she returned three months later.

Michaluk said she called and explained there must be some mistake, but the customer service representative insisted her meter was functioning properly. In the end, she paid the bill to avoid having her power cut off.

“I was disgusted at the treatment. It was hard enough to go through the fire issue and having to move back into the house,” said Michaluk, a 44-year-old safety manager. “I think it’s about time that somebody did something. It’s a monopoly. I have no other options. I can’t go to somebody else to get this service. And when I say there’s a problem or an issue, they basically ignore your request, because what are you going to do?”

Complaints like Michaluk’s are why Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin has his sights set on the publicly owned electrical utility. At a news conference Tuesday, Marin said his office has received hundreds of complaints about poor service, unintelligible bills and unexplained withdrawals of huge sums from customer accounts.

The ombudsman investigates complaints from the public about Ontario government services. Hydro One is the province’s largest electrical utility and mostly serves rural areas, including about 36,000 customers in Essex County.

Marin said his office has been experiencing issues similar to the ones customers are complaining about — unreturned calls and slow response times.

“We get the run-around. Sometimes it’s like wrestling with a slippery pig,” Marin said. “We will be looking at whether that culture of public service is there at Hydro One or not.”

Hydro One spokeswoman Tiziana Baccega Rosa acknowledged there’s room for improvement in a few areas, including customer service.

Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin speaks at a news conference at Queens Park in Toronto on Tuesday February 4, 2014 to announce his latest investigation into complaints about billing practices by Hydro One. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Aaron Vincent Elkaim)

“We know that the level of service we’ve been providing is not acceptable to our customers. It’s not acceptable to us,” she said. “We obviously respect the decision of the ombudsman’s office and we’re going to work openly and constructively with him throughout the investigation.”

Out of 1.3 million customers, about two per cent have gone more than 90 days without receiving a bill, Baccega Rosa said. About three per cent have received multiple estimated bills instead of meter reads, which can result in a big bill all at once when a worker finally reads the meter and calculates the difference between the estimates and the customer’s actual power use.

Marin said he’s heard from customers who have faced large overdraft charges after Hydro One took a large lump sum out of their bank accounts — sometimes as much as $20,000. Even if the withdrawal was an error, Marin said Hydro One has been telling customers it can only offer a credit toward future bills, not a refund.

“When a customer overpays an account, whether or not we take out the money in error, the customer calls us and that money’s returned,” Rosa said. “If it was our error and we took out a big amount of money, if you’ve incurred overdraft charges, that will also be refunded.”

Cor Buis, a retiree who lives in Tilbury, has experienced the problem of long periods of estimated bills followed by a lump sum bill for a correction that spans several months. Luckily, the difference between the amount he paid on the estimated bills and the actual amount he owed worked out to a credit in his favour.

Still, figuring out what was going on and trying to make sense out of the bill was harder than it needed to be, Buis said.

“How do you expect a guy like me to figure it out?” Buis said. “They make it too complicated. Read the meter, charge me what I owe you.”

MPP Rick Nicholls (C — Chatham-Kent-Essex) said his constituency offices receive about a dozen calls a week from people complaining about their Hydro One bills. He said the stakes are high — he’s even heard from businesses considering shutting their doors because they can’t afford the huge hydro bills.

“In rural Ontario, they’re really feeling the pinch right now,” he said. “People want to pay their bills, but they also expect a reasonable level of customer service.”

In a release, the ombudsman’s office said Marin will release the findings of his investigations in nine months. Anyone who wants to file a complaint related to the investigation can call 1,-800-263-1830, email info@ombudsman.on.ca or file a complaint online at ombudsman.on.ca/Make-a-Complaint.aspx.

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